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Category Archives: Russia & Eurasia

Ukraine Crisis Highlights Security Needs Of Civilian Nuclear Power

On November 27-28 a conference in Paris addressed a broad spectrum of challenges humanity is facing. Renowned thinkers, including Nuriel Roubini and Jacob Frenkel, the former Chairman of JP Morgan International, and three central bankers from Iceland, Tunisia, and Armenia, warned about inflation and the growing mountain of debt threatening the global economy. The panel

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Europe’s Energy Outlook Imperiled By Policy Myopia

Europe’s winter – likely to be warmer than average – is a welcome relief for a continent that was facing existential energy supply problems a few months ago. Those problems still exist, and many Europeans are suffering due to the avoidable problems associated with overreliance on Russian gas. Thankfully, the window in which Russia could have leveraged its energy

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How to expel Russia from the UN

The war in Ukraine will have demonstrated the impotence of the United Nations if a permanent member of the Security Council with full veto power becomes a rogue state without consequence. For the havoc it created, Russia must now be evicted from the UN. Read more.

Russia Is Threatening Europe By Attacking Ukrainian Energy

Russia’s targets are not limited to nuclear. A September 12th attack on Ukraine’s second largest thermal powerplant left thousands in major metropolitan areas without power. The attack was a response to Ukrainian counteroffensives, where the Ukrainian military retook over 6,000 sq km of the Russian-occupied territory in the Balakleya, Izyum and Kupiansk regions, and seized the initiative. While this

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The Greed And Geopolitics Of The OPEC+ Oil Production Cut

This move is not unexpected. As I wrote here, President Joe Biden’s failure in Saudi Arabia in July to secure more oil production shook Saudi Arabia’s transactional relationship (security for oil) with the USA to its foundations. Saudi Arabia began importing Russian fuel oils for domestic use to free up more crude oil for export months ago, with the

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Russia’s Purported Sabotage Of The Nord Stream Pipeline Marks A Point Of No Return

There can now be no negotiated reopening or resumption of deliveries even if the battlefields of Ukraine instantly fall silent. The Russians have achieved their immediate goal, with Reuters reporting “Nord Stream AG said it was impossible to estimate when the gas network system’s working capability would be restored.” This winter, Europe is doomed to face

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Russia’s trajectory of hate: A big war against the West coming

Putin, in his Götterdämmerung moment, is fearmongering. In Stalinist propaganda language, he claims that the West “took off their masks and showed their true nature” … “for centuries [the West] wanted to colonize Russia, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union dreamed, but failed, to shatter it into pieces, set off ethnic groups against each other,

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A Tale of Good Intentions and Unexpected Consequences

Despite Francis Fukuyama’s infamous opinion, history certainly did not end. The imperial collapse was an unintended consequence of Gorbachev’s desire to humanize socialism and save the USSR. He utterly failed in both tasks, but Russia and other Soviet republics were liberated from the Communist nightmare, and the world gained 30 years of relative peace, which is

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Pariahs And Pals: Emerging Russo-Iranian Energy Cooperation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met for a much-heralded meeting in Tehran on July 19th to discuss energy policy, maritime security, and Syria. Many are eager to portray the meeting as a convergence of principled anti-western leaders who will challenge the international system. Read the full

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